The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Austin on 2016-03-01.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many applications to the Healthy New Towns programme were made from each local authority area.
Jane Ellison
The Department does not hold information on the applications to the Healthy New Towns programme.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-04-08.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 24 March 2016 to Question 31889, whether local authorities can instruct academy schools to admit children to meet their legal obligation; and whether it is her policy that local authorities will be able to instruct academy schools to admit children to meet their legal obligation under the proposed fully academised system.
Nick Gibb
Academy schools are their own admission authorities as are maintained voluntary aided and foundation schools. Such schools set their own admission policies and can only change them after consulting local people. Local authorities (LAs) can object to the Schools Adjudicator about an admission policy or a reduction in an admission number but cannot determine how many pupils such schools must admit.
LAs are able to launch a competition for a new free school and, in certain circumstances, place children through the local fair access protocol or, where a school does not agree to admit a child, seek to direct admission.
All state-funded schools are required to participate in the local in-year fair access protocol. Protocols allocate places to children who are unplaced by the start of the school year. Legislation also provides local authorities with powers to seek to direct the admission of children to maintained schools for which they are not the admission authority. Academy funding agreements contain similar direction powers.
Directions can be sought when there is no other school place within a reasonable distance or where a looked after child has been refused a place.
The Schools Adjudicator decides directions for maintained schools while the Education Funding Agency decides directions for academies on behalf of the Secretary of State.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Neil Coyle on 2016-05-10.
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of the Housing and Planning Bill on housing associations that manage properties on behalf of councils.
Brandon Lewis
The Housing and Planning Bill intends to reduce the regulatory controls for private registered providers of social housing with the aim to reclassify housing associations as private organisations.
Through the Bill, the Secretary of State will have the power by affirmative regulations, to make provision for the purpose of limiting or removing the ability of local authorities to exert influence over private registered providers of social housing, through the nomination of board members and acting as shareholders. We will be discussing the potential impact of these regulations with some housing associations and local authorities, in advance of regulations being introduced later in 2016.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2016-06-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps he is taking to improve the standard of housing for service personnel.
Mark Lancaster
The Ministry of Defence is committed to improving the quality of Service Family Accommodation (SFA) provided to our Service personnel. 88% of SFA currently meet or exceed the decent homes standard. If a property fails to meet the standard, it will either be upgraded or disposed of.
Since financial year 2010-11 investment in housing has resulted in:
The separate installation of some 12,000 kitchens, bathrooms, or central heating systems and the insulation of 16,692 lofts.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2016-09-12.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department plans to ask energy suppliers to reconsider the use of income-differential tariffs.
Jesse Norman
Energy supply companies are required to ensure customers are on the cheapest tariff that is in line with their preferences and specifically, as to their chosen payment method and to the type of tariff (fixed term or variable) they prefer.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Uddin on 2015-11-10.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the current availability of qualified speech therapists at the point of assessment throughout the NHS and community healthcare provision.
Lord Prior of Brampton
The Health and Social Care Information Centre annual census data shows that as at 30 September 2014, there were 6,207 full time equivalent speech and language therapists working in the National Health Service in England, this is a rise of 2% since May 2010.
Health Education England (HEE) and the Department of Health commissioned the Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CfWI) to undertake a stock take of the speech and language therapists workforce in England. The CfWI published Securing the future workforce supply – Speech and language therapy stocktake, in December 2014. A copy of this is attached. The stocktake investigated the current balance of demand and supply for speech and language therapists and explored how this is expected to change by 2025, including those working in the public and private sector.
HEE has increased the number of speech and language therapist training places in 2015-16 to 668, an increase of 3.7% over 2014-15. HEE will take the content of the CfWI speech and language therapy stocktake into account in their workforce planning and future commissioning decisions.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-12-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, for what reasons the New Medicine Service is not available to mental health patients.
George Freeman
The conditions/therapy areas selected for the New Medicine Service (NMS) are those where community pharmacies are best able to demonstrate the value of the service and could provide the greatest benefit to patients. The conditions/therapy areas are currently asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, type 2 diabetes, antiplatelet/anticoagulant therapy and hypertension.
As the commissioners of National Health Service pharmaceutical services it is for NHS England to consider, in light of the best available evidence, whether to negotiate changes to the NMS including whether the NMS should be offered to mental health patients.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lilian Greenwood on 2016-01-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what proportion of ticket machines were fitted with labels advertising ticket offices of each train operating company on the most recent date for which figures are available.
Claire Perry
Under the terms of the Ticketing Settlement Agreement
“the opening hours of each Ticket Office must be prominently displayed at a location nearby that is accessible to members of the public at all times unless the Authority agrees otherwise” (s6-16, p.144).
It is for the operator to decide where the times are displayed. Therefore, the Department has no information as to how many would be on ticket machines.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Brendan O’Hara on 2016-02-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the estimated radiological dose uptake was in terms of (a) individual whole equivalent dose in milli-Sievert and (b) collective dose in man-Sievert for (i) Services and his Department’s civilian personnel involved in and responding to the incident, (ii) civilian emergency services personnel responders attending and (iii) members of the public during each Astral exercise between February 2011 and November 2012.
Penny Mordaunt
The Ministry of Defence maintains a Defence Nuclear Emergency Organisation (NEO) to respond in the unlikely event of an emergency involving the transport of defence nuclear materials. The NEO organises regular exercises to test the effectiveness of its emergency response planning and arrangements. These include the Astral series of exercises, which are designed to be challenging, and thus simulate the extremely unlikely event of a release of radioactive material from the transport containers. No radioactive materials are used or released to the environment during the exercises. The specific exercise objectives do not require assessments or estimates of decontamination, environmental or other post-incident decontamination costs or of radiological dose uptakes. The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) undertook the modelling for each Astral exercise between February 2011 and November 2012.
I am withholding information about the physical state, mass quantity, release fraction and total released radioactivity assumed for these exercises as disclosure would or would be likely to prejudice national security.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Thangam Debbonaire on 2016-03-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that refugees arriving in other EU member-states who have family in the UK are identified and supported in being reunited with their relatives.
James Brokenshire
All migrants arriving in other EU Member States who wish to seek asylum should do so in those States and provide information to the asylum authorities about any family members in the UK or other Member States so that the family unity provisions in the Dublin Regulation can be applied.
We are providing further resources to the European Asylum Support Office, including help in border “hotspots” in Greece and Italy, to identify and register asylum applicants, including children at risk on first arrival in the EU.
We will consider any request made to us by other Member States to take responsibility for asylum applicants because they have close family who are legally in the UK in accordance with the terms of the Dublin Regulation.
If not claiming asylum, individuals outside the UK are entitled to apply under the Immigration Rules to join relatives in the UK by making the appropriate visa application.